


Emptiness

by CuriosityKilledtheCas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Depressed Dean, Depression, Drunk Dean, Gen, Guilty Dean, M/M, Sadness, cas totally has a crush on dean though even if he doesnt mention it in this, dean says too much, dean!angst, drinking dean, drunk, slight eating disorder dean kinda, worried cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:38:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriosityKilledtheCas/pseuds/CuriosityKilledtheCas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only time Dean can tell Cas his feelings without hesitation and choking up and overthinking it is when he’s drunk. Cas will remember, but Dean will hardly in the morning.</p><p>Cas can see in Dean's eyes that he doesn't remember a word from last night. Dean doesn't know how much Cas knows. He thinks his secret is still a secret, but you can see that is his eyes, too. His secret is his sadness, and Cas can see it clear as day now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emptiness

“What?” Dean looked up groggily from the uneaten cereal he’d been stirring in his bowl, trying to get lost in the white swirl of the milk, “what’re you looking at?”  
“Nothing,” Cas said in a small, barely there voice. Dean didn’t believe him. But he was too tired, too sick, and too hung over to really care.  
 _“I’m a fucking failure!”_ Dean’s words from the previous night rang through Castiel’s ears as his eyes wandered over his best friend, _“Why do you even want me here? What good am I? I’m like poison, Cas, I’m killing you so slowly you aren’t even noticing it but I am!”_  
“Seriously, dude,” The clatter of his metal spoon hitting the table made Cas’ gaze snap up to meet him in the eye, “What is it? You’ve been looking at me like that since I got up this morning. You’re freaking me out.”  
“What do you mean?” His eyebrows furrowed.  
“That,” Dean pointed, “That look right there. You’re looking at me like I’m a lost puppy. Stop it.”  
 _“I’m so lost, Cas!”_ he could hear the sobs in his mind, flashbacks of the night before playing on reruns, _“I don’t know where I’m going anymore! I just keep finding jobs to do to keep myself occupied, I’m just trying to keep everyone safe but it’s not like I actually have a plan! What the fuck am I doing?”_  
“I’m… Sorry?” Cas tried, hoping it was a reasonable reply. What was he supposed to say? _‘I’m only looking at you like that because I know every little secret about you. I’m only looking at you because I’m worried for your mental health.’_ That just wasn’t right. Cas might not have known too much about human emotion, but he knew what it meant to spill your secrets all in one drunken mistake. He knew the angst, the bone-chilling feeling, that would shoot through Dean’s veins if he told him what he knew. He was afraid of making it worse, anything could make it worse, just by saying one wrong thing.  
 _“I’m going crazy! It’s hell all over again! I just keep saying the wrong things and doing even worse things and I can never make up my mind! No one can tell, Cas, no one even knows but I’m nothing like how I look! I’m never happy but my life’s too good to feel bad for myself and it fucking sucks!”_  
Castiel’s eyes flickered away from his best friend’s face, unable to look at him when he finally took a bite of food. He breathed a sigh of relief, because Dean was eating. Dean had taken a bite of food. He was getting better, he had to be. But just as soon as the relief came, it was sucked out of him. Because he remembered.  
 _“I don’t eat because I don’t deserve to be healthy. I don’t get to be. And if I give in and bite down on that burger? I make sure there’s a bathroom nearby,”_ his chuckle had been so dark, so bitter, it made Castiel’s stomach churn, _“God, I don’t know why I’m telling you now. It’s the booze, isn’t it? That’s one thing I can stomach. I don’t have to fight against the alcohol. It makes things blurry. Nice, right? Blurry? Sharp things can cut you, but blurry little nights like this? I won’t even care about what I tell you tomorrow.”_  
Or he wouldn’t remember.  
He didn’t remember. It was plain on his blank face, as he stared absently into god knows where. Dean Winchester didn’t know the cat was out of the bag. He didn’t know Cas knew how much he hated himself. If he did…  
 _“I would never forgive myself for burdening you, Cassie, Never ever. You’re the only one who’s ever been there. Sam hates me, and Bobby, well I mean he’s dead because of me and fucking Jo’s dead because of me and god knows that all of my family is just dead. ‘cept Sam. But he hates me, remember? He told me he did. I dunno if it was the real Sam, though. The one in my head says it a lot, too. It doesn’t matter. You still like me, right? You shouldn’t, but you do.”_  
Cas couldn’t help but steal another glance at his now seemingly-stable, sobered up friend. Maybe it’d been a dream— well, angels didn’t dream so that option was out— or maybe it was just the built up emotion, just the alcohol getting to him. Dean didn’t mean any of it, did he? It was just the Booze talking.  
He knew it wasn’t.  
He tried to look at Dean, really look at him, but all he saw was a blank spot. He tried harder, but it seemed the harder he looked at Dean Winchester, the faster he disappeared, like he was subconsciously erasing himself from the room, without doing anything at all.  
There was no real emotion on his face. It could have been because of the hang over, but Cas knew it wasn’t. He could see it out of the corner of his eye, when Dean thought he wasn’t looking. The utter emptiness. It used to be sad, a depressing existence, and Castiel would see the drooping look to his posture and walk over to talk to him. He would sense the sadness and make it better, healing him in the only ways he could.  
Only now there was nothing to heal. Just blankness. Dean had shut it all out, every bit of emotion he had, and replaced it with bitter sarcasm and bad pop-culture reference puns. He smiled, and pretended it didn’t hurt his face. The fake happiness canceled out the sadness, and now there was just nothing. Cas didn’t know how he could fix nothing.  
 _“I’m just an empty vase, Cas. Missing the flowers. I know you can see through me, I know you want to fill me, but you can’t! I’m sorry, but you just can’t.”_  
Castiel didn’t want to hear it anymore, but he couldn’t stop his own thoughts, and he was too afraid to leave the room. He was too afraid to leave Dean alone with himself. He knew what it did, when he had to be alone.  
 _“The worst kind of demons aren’t the ones I kill, you know. The worst ones are the kind you can’t kill, no matter what kind of weapons you use. There’s no exorcism for depression. There are no magic words or voodoo medicine shit to make it go away. There’s only one real way to kill them off, and I’m too much of a coward. When I die, it’ll mean something more than just pussying out of life. When I die, I’m gonna fucking save someone.”_  
That was the moment it clicked for him, when Cas opened his eyes and finally saw why Dean was so ready for his own self-sacrificing demise. He didn’t want to be known for his suicide. He wanted to be known for his sacrifice. Either way, he didn’t plan on living much longer.  
“Cas, you okay?” Dean asked from across the table.  
“Fine.”  
 _“I’m not fine anymore Castiel!”_ Mental-Dean screamed in his head, _“I don’t think I’ve ever really been fine! And you see it, don’t you? You’ve always seen how unstable I am.”_  
“You sure? You look like you’ve had enough, and it’s only noon.”  
 _“I’ve had enough of my shit life, Cas! Just let me fucking die already! Stop saving me, thinking you’re all heroic! Every time you save me, it gets so much harder to give up!”_  
“Then stop giving up,” Cas whispered to himself.  
“What?”  
“I, um, I am tired, I guess. You kept me up last night.” He traced Dean’s face for any sign of last night, any recognition of his drunken confessions.  
“I’m a bitch when I’m drunk,” Dean laughed, but it didn’t sound right. It didn’t ring in Cas’ ears like he remembered it used to, “You should have just given up on me.”  
“I’ll never give up.” Cas said, a double meaning to his words. And there must have been a flash of familiarity in his words, because it showed on Dean’s face, lit up his eyes with something other than emptiness for just a brief moment, so quick a human would never even detect it. He didn’t remember, not really, but Cas could tell he knew something. He just hoped that whatever something he’d sparked in Dean was the right kind. The kind that would keep him from giving up, too.  
Because then the flash was gone, and Dean was empty again, and Cas didn’t know how he was going to fill him again.


End file.
